Wednesday, April 09, 2008
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the politics of the Olympic flame
a lot of brouhaha in the news right now about the Olympic torch relay because of protesters interrupting the relay in Paris, London, and today in San Francisco to raise awareness of China's human rights violations and oppression of Tibet.
i'm not sure how i feel about this whole issue one way or another. i support Tibet's struggle for freedom, but i wonder how much some foaming-at-the-mouth San Franciscan radical is really helping the cause by rushing the torchbearers (one of whom was a 14-year-old girl who's spearheaded a local environmental movement who has since decided not to carry the torch) and trying to extinguish the flame. i mean, what's going to happen if they actually do extinguish the flame? everyone will stand there and look dumbly at each other for a few brief moments, and then the torch will be re-lit from one of the several backup flames and everything will proceed from there. i don't see how that's really doing the poor Tibetans any good.
but i don't understand the attitude so many seem to have that the torch relay is some sacrosanct event being trampled upon by the protesters, nor the attitude that "this is a sporting event and thus should have nothing to do with politics." the Olympics may be a sporting event, but it's a sporting event with roots in military preparation. and the introduction of the torch relay itself was probably one of the most audacious and atrocious political acts of the 20th century! from wikipedia:The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl's film, "Olympia", was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.so why all the uproar to protect a tradition instituted by one of the greatest human rights violators in history? in that light, the relay seems like an awfully appropriate forum for people protesting in the name of human rights violations in Tibet.
maybe, if it's just a forum for political squabbling (and a very costly one, at that), we should just do away with the torch relay entirely.
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Comments (20)
you know... extinguishing the torch, and bitchinga bout it... that's easy. working to actually fix things, that shit is hard. and i seriously doubt any of those dubious do good protestors would actually give up much to help anyone in tibet. or any of the other thousands of sad places in the world. it's in the limelight and it gives em a good story to tell. pfft. anyways. i don't pay attn to the olympics, i hardly cared about the can games held in whitehorse last year either. not my cuppa. neither is this bullshit about the torch.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article627.html
EH
also, you look so bloody cute with your hair short and flippy like that, dude. heh.
I've participated in my share of SF protest rallies and the like. I agree that it really doesn't mean jack shit, but it allows us to be condescending dickheads who are so much more socially conscious than everyone else.
i can't tell if the dude above me is being genuinely self depreciating or is just angry and being sarcastic. but of a very many people, most people, i stand by what i said. *shrug* alot of those types ARE condescending dickheads, too. especially the fuckos who protest and don't consider consequences of carless actions
careless rather, and at least they aren't running down torch bearers and members of their entourage in cars.
HAH
No more than four minutes ago, I was outside when the SFPD went chaaaaarging the fuck past with full sirens. It was like, fifteen cars and the bikes seemed to go on forever, and I wondered just what the fuck that was about.Â
If the torch goes out, use one of those immolating monks to light it again.
annnnd... you know thinking about this i do not want to be misinterpreted. i don't think all protestors are dickheads, ok because protesting things like china's occupation of tibet and the human rights violations that continue in that country is something very powerful. protests can change many, many things. the people who set up the protests in the states and used rosa parks as a figure head. they went about that in a very very smart manner in my oppinion even if it's a bit cynical to look at the claudette girl who was rejected as the initial parks figure - pfft. smart move man, it worked. the people who gather outside here and protest unfair decisions in residential school cases. the people who protest unfair treatment of prisoners, bills that keep people from marrying each other when religion should have nothing to do with legal union etc. and i think it very fair that they have thier voices heard and i think that protests are often times the only way to do that. these people aren't assaulting anyone to get thier point across. if they were... they would be dick heads! careless, ignorant, dickheads who discredit the whole goddamn idea behind staging protests and i think that that is a very dangerous thing to do.
sometimes, people are fucking stupid. "i don't agree with this, so i'm going to raise a big stink about it but not actually DO anything." damn. we've probably all been there, but it doesn't make it any less stupid.
'after the many pics you've posted on this blog, this may be an odd one for me to make this remark on, but i think you look fantastic in this shot. '
Thanks!
I seem to be more likely to post photos if I've gone a little bit out of my way to gussy up or put on a little makeup or something, which is not the norm for me these days.
More often than not, I'm just strolling around these parts sans makeup and plainish--and for some reason, I just posted a photo of that.
So it may be an unlikely photo to comment on, but also a welcome one (to me), because it looks like the real me and sometimes I think I look nondescript borderline ugly but I'm working on not caring too much because it's all a matter of individual interpretation and attitude anyway.
(On a slightly different note, even though I am not really smiling in that photo, I currently can hardly look at it without starting to giggle because I can almost see the mannikin's arm socket in the frame and earlier today I was having an email exchange with a friend about how I might be able to make a little extra money and I came up with this mannikin arm socket penetration scenario because I'm sure there's a fetish market for that somewhere online. It would involve his anatomy and camera, though, so he probably won't go for it, though, even though he secretly can hardly resist. I'll have to think of something that I can do myself.)
*
Did you see that Leni Riefenstahl documentary? D. and started to watch it together a while back, but then I had to leave the room because we got in a heated argument about Hitler.
Oddly enough, we seem to get into heated arguments about Hitler several times per year.
'D's dire pronouncements remind me of when i was young and i'd shout at my mom when angry at her: "i hate you! i'm going to go live with my dad!" '
I remember screaming, 'I hate you!' at my mom when I had to get blood drawn when I was a kid and this inept nurse kept missing my vein, but I guess I was too stupidly polite to yell at the nurse, so I let my mom have it. I felt guilty about that for years, but then again, it was my mom who taught me to be overly polite, so there you go. Misplaced propriety breeds misdirected rage.
"Misplaced propriety breeds misdirected rage."
what great way of putting it. for many people it seems to, yeah. this is why customer service industries are so DANGEROUS OK. heh.
I couldn't agree more!
Hey, it might be a Nazi tradition, but it's still a tradition, dang it.
Clearly pressure needs to be brought against China. I don't believe putting the torch out will solve anything, or even be that symbolic, except for the few involved in putting it out. I'm not the most educated in these affairs, but economic santions seems like a better route to go. And perhaps if we did this, we would get less lead based painted items for our children to chew on?
i'd say i'm not for protesting
or for the oppression of the tibetans
or for that matter
san francisco
ryc: yeah. i'm pretty proud of myself because i actually told him to his face that i didn't believe a word he was saying and i thought he was just being drunk and stupid, and i told him i jus wanted to be alone. usually i'm the idiotwho goes "ooo a boy!? likes me!?" and i do something stupid. I'm finally learning atleast...not so much learning as I knew guys could be dickwads, but actually sticking up for me I guess.
'does phonological and morphological critique,'
I love this phrase.
'and is currently working on a sweet review of the Mullholland Dr. chapbook.'
And yay.
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& to heartpound's comment up there:
'this is why customer service industries are so DANGEROUS OK.'
Tell me about it. I'm in such an industry. Perhaps my long stint in such an industry plays into why my poems grow increasingly grotesque.
Soon they may be downright scatalogical with flies buzzing above them.
Woohoo!
I saw paison's initial comment about your poem and just that one comment ruffled my mean feathers. I don't even know if I should look at the further conversation, because I don't want to be tempted to even get started with him--at least not right before bed.
But I'm ever so pleased you enjoyed reading my weird poem self-analysis.
I love your description of loving it. It makes me think of a filthy teddy bear stuffed with contraband.
Heck, I'd analyze other people's poems that way, too (not just my own), but it seems like maybe that would be strangely presumptuous or somesuch.
I'm not sure how I feel about all of this either. I always thought the olympics were supposed to be something that went on despite differences between countries. It is a contest that is supposed to keep some sense of world connection, despite all of the shit that goes on. As such, I was against the boycott of the Moscow olympics, and I guess I feel the same way about this one. Imagine if Jesse Owens had not been able to kick some Aryan ass.
On the other hand, why choose China as the host? We can compete with them without letting them host the thing. We really probably should have had it in the US again, because WE NEVER VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS.
I don't know man. I think maybe the olympics should be exempt from all of this shit.